Effective outdoor pathloss prediction: A multi-layer segmentation approach with weighting map

Predicting pathloss by considering the physical environment is crucial for effective wireless network planning. Traditional methods, such as ray tracing and model-based approaches, often face challenges due to high computational complexity and discrepancies between models and real-world environments. In contrast, deep learning has emerged as a promising alternative, offering accurate path loss predictions with reduced computational complexity. In our research, we introduce a ResNet-based model designed to enhance path loss prediction. We employ innovative techniques to capture key features of the environment by generating transmission (Tx) and reception (Rx) depth maps, as well as a distance map from the geographic data. Recognizing the significant attenuation caused by signal reflection and diffraction, particularly at high frequencies, we have developed a weighting map that emphasizes the areas adjacent to the direct path between Tx and Rx for path loss prediction. {Extensive simulations demonstrate that our model outperforms PPNet, RPNet, and Vision Transformer (ViT) by 1.2-3.0 dB using dataset of ITU challenge 2024 and ICASSP 2023. In addition, the floating point operations (FLOPs) of the proposed model is 60\% less than those of benchmarks.} Additionally, ablation studies confirm that the inclusion of the weighting map significantly enhances prediction performance.

OpenISAC: An Open-Source Real-Time Experimentation Platform for OFDM-ISAC with Over-the-Air Synchronization

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is envisioned to be one of the key usage scenarios for the sixth generation (6G) mobile communication networks. While significant progresses have been achieved for the theoretical studies, the further advancement of ISAC is hampered by the lack of accessible, open-source, and real-time experimental platforms. To address this gap, we introduce OpenISAC, a versatile and high-performance open-source platform for real-time ISAC experimentation. OpenISAC utilizes orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform and implements crucial sensing functionalities, including both monostatic and bistatic delay-Doppler sensing. A key feature of our platform is a novel over-the-air (OTA) synchronization mechanism that enables robust bistatic operations without requiring a wired connection between nodes. The platform is built entirely on open-source software, leveraging the universal software radio peripheral (USRP) hardware driver (UHD) library, thus eliminating the need for any commercial licenses. It supports a wide range of software-defined radios, from the cost-effective USRP B200 series to the high-performance X400 series. The physical layer modulator and demodulator are implemented with C++ for high-speed processing, while the sensing data is streamed to a Python environment, providing a user-friendly interface for rapid prototyping and validation of sensing signal processing algorithms. With flexible parameter selection and real-time communication and sensing operation, OpenISAC serves as a powerful and accessible tool for the academic and research communities to explore and innovate within the field of OFDM-ISAC.

Near-field Target Localization: Effect of Hardware Impairments

The prior works on near-field target localization have mostly assumed ideal hardware models and thus suffer from two limitations in practice. First, extremely large-scale arrays (XL-arrays) usually face a variety of hardware impairments (HIs) that may introduce unknown phase and/or amplitude errors. Second, the existing block coordinate descent (BCD)-based methods for joint estimation of the HI indicator, channel gain, angle, and range may induce considerable target localization error when the target is very close to the XL-array. To address these issues, we propose in this paper a new three-phase HI-aware near-field localization method, by efficiently detecting faulty antennas and estimating the positions of targets. Specifically, we first determine faulty antennas by using compressed sensing (CS) methods and improve detection accuracy based on coarse target localization. Then, a dedicated phase calibration method is designed to correct phase errors induced by detected faulty antennas. Subsequently, an efficient near-field localization method is devised to accurately estimate the positions of targets based on the full XL-array with phase calibration. Additionally, we resort to the misspecified Cramer-Rao bound (MCRB) to quantify the performance loss caused by HIs. Last, numerical results demonstrate that our proposed method significantly reduces the localization errors as compared to various benchmark schemes, especially for the case with a short target range and/or a high fault probability.

CKM-Enabled Joint Spatial-Doppler Domain Clutter Suppression for Low-Altitude UAV ISAC

The rapid development of low-altitude economy has placed higher demands on the sensing of small-sized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) targets. However, the complex and dynamic low-altitude environment, like the urban and mountainous areas, makes clutter a significant factor affecting the sensing performance. Traditional clutter suppression methods based on Doppler difference or signal strength are inadequate for scenarios with dynamic clutter and slow-moving targets like low-altitude UAVs. In this paper, motivated by the concept of channel knowledge map (CKM), we propose a novel clutter suppression technique for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, by leveraging a new type of CKM named clutter angle map (CLAM). CLAM is a site-specific database, containing location-specific primary clutter angles for the coverage area of the ISAC base station (BS). With CLAM, the sensing signal components corresponding to the clutter environment can be effectively removed before target detection and parameter estimation, which greatly enhances the sensing performance. Besides, to take into account the scenarios when the targets and clutters are in close directions so that pure CLAM-based spatial domain clutter suppression is no longer effective, we further propose a two-step CLAM-enabled joint spatial-Doppler domain clutter suppression algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed technique effectively suppresses clutter and enhances target sensing performance, achieving accurate parameter estimation for sensing slow-moving low-altitude UAV targets.

Cost-Effective XL-MIMO Communication with Cylinder Directly-Connected Antenna Array

Extremely large-scale multi-input multi-output (XL-MIMO) is a promising technology for the sixth generation (6G) wireless networks, thanks to its superior spatial resolution and beamforming gains. In order to realize XL-MIMO costeffectively, an innovative ray antenna array (RAA) architecture with directly-connected uniform linear array (ULA) was recently proposed, which achieves flexible beamforming without relying on traditional analog phase shifters or digital beamforming. However, RAA suffers from the signal blockage issue since its ray-configured ULAs are placed in the same plane. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel antenna array architecture termed cylinder directly-connected antenna array (DCAA), which is achieved via multiple simple uniform circular array (sUCA) with carefully designed orientations in a layered three-dimensional structure. The so-called sUCA partitions the uniform circular array (UCA) into two sub-arrays where each sub-array has all antenna elements directly connected to achieve a desired beam direction corresponding to the sub-array's physical orientation, thus achieving full spatial coverage. Compared with the conventional ULA architecture with hybrid analog/digital beamforming (HBF), the proposed cylinder DCAA can achieve uniform spatial resolution, enhanced communication rate and lower hardware costs. Simulation results are provided to validate the promised gains of cylinder DCAA, demonstrating its great potential for high-frequency systems such as millimeter wave (mmWave) and Terahertz (THz) systems.

Channel Knowledge Map Construction: Recent Advances and Open Challenges

Channel knowledge map (CKM) has emerged as a pivotal technology for environment-aware wireless communications and sensing, which provides a priori location-specific channel knowledge to facilitate network optimization. Efficient CKM construction is an important technical problem for its effective implementation. This article provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in CKM construction. First, we examine classical interpolation-based CKM construction methods, highlighting their limitations in practical deployments. Next, we explore image processing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, which leverage feature extraction to construct CKMs based on environmental knowledge. Furthermore, we present emerging wireless radiance field (WRF) frameworks that exploit neural radiance fields or Gaussian splatting to construct high-fidelity CKMs from sparse measurement data. Finally, we outline various future research directions in real-time and cross-domain CKM construction, as well as cost-efficient deployment of CKMs.

Data Fusion for BS-UE Cooperative MIMO-OFDM ISAC

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a promising technique for expanding the functionalities of wireless networks with enhanced spectral efficiency. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined six basic sensing operation modes in wireless networks. To further enhance the sensing capability of wireless networks, this paper proposes a new sensing operation mode, i.e., the base station (BS) and user equipment (UE) cooperative sensing. Specifically, after decoding the communication data, the UE further processes the received signal to extract the target sensing information. We propose an efficient algorithm for fusing the sensing results obtained by the BS and UE, by exploiting the geometric relationship among BS, UE and targets as well as the expected sensing quality in the BS monostatic and BS-UE bistatic sensing. The results show that the proposed data fusion method for cooperative sensing can effectively improve the position and velocity estimation accuracy of multiple targets, and provide a new approach on the expansion of the sensing pattern.

AI-based Environment-Aware XL-MIMO Channel Estimation with Location-Specific Prior Knowledge Enabled by CKM

Accurate and efficient acquisition of wireless channel state information (CSI) is crucial to enhance the communication performance of wireless systems. However, with the continuous densification of wireless links, increased channel dimensions, and the use of higher-frequency bands, channel estimation in the sixth generation (6G) and beyond wireless networks faces new challenges, such as insufficient orthogonal pilot sequences, inadequate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for channel training, and more sophisticated channel statistical distributions in complex environment. These challenges pose significant difficulties for classical channel estimation algorithms like least squares (LS) and maximum a posteriori (MAP). To address this problem, we propose a novel environment-aware channel estimation framework with location-specific prior channel distribution enabled by the new concept of channel knowledge map (CKM). To this end, we propose a new type of CKM called channel score function map (CSFM), which learns the channel probability density function (PDF) using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. To fully exploit the prior information in CSFM, we propose a plug-and-play (PnP) based algorithm to decouple the regularized MAP channel estimation problem, thereby reducing the complexity of the optimization process. Besides, we employ Tweedie's formula to establish a connection between the channel score function, defined as the logarithmic gradient of the channel PDF, and the channel denoiser. This allows the use of the high-precision, environment-aware channel denoiser from the CSFM to approximate the channel score function, thus enabling efficient processing of the decoupled channel statistical components. Simulation results show that the proposed CSFM-PnP based channel estimation technique significantly outperforms the conventional techniques in the aforementioned challenging scenarios.

Wireless Communication for Low-Altitude Economy with UAV Swarm Enabled Two-Level Movable Antenna System

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is regarded as a key enabling platform for low-altitude economy, due to its advantages such as 3D maneuverability, flexible deployment, and LoS air-to-air/ground communication links. In particular, the intrinsic high mobility renders UAV especially suitable for operating as a movable antenna (MA) from the sky. In this paper, by exploiting the flexible mobility of UAV swarm and antenna position adjustment of MA, we propose a novel UAV swarm enabled two-level MA system, where UAVs not only individually deploy a local MA array, but also form a larger-scale MA system with their individual MA arrays via swarm coordination. We formulate a general optimization problem to maximize the minimum achievable rate over all ground UEs, by jointly optimizing the 3D UAV swarm placement positions, their individual MAs' positions, and receive beamforming for different UEs. We first consider the special case where each UAV has only one antenna, under different scenarios of one single UE, two UEs, and arbitrary number of UEs. In particular, for the two-UE case, we derive the optimal UAV swarm placement positions in closed-form that achieves IUI-free communication, where the UAV swarm forms a uniform sparse array (USA) satisfying collision avoidance constraint. While for the general case with arbitrary number of UEs, we propose an efficient alternating optimization algorithm to solve the formulated non-convex optimization problem. Then, we extend the results to the case where each UAV is equipped with multiple antennas. Numerical results verify that the proposed low-altitude UAV swarm enabled MA system significantly outperforms various benchmark schemes, thanks to the exploitation of two-level mobility to create more favorable channel conditions for multi-UE communications.

Ray Antenna Array Achieves Uniform Angular Resolution Cost-Effectively for Low-Altitude UAV Swarm ISAC

Ray antenna array (RAA) is a novel multi-antenna architecture comprising massive low-cost antenna elements and a few radio-frequency (RF) chains. The antenna elements are arranged in a novel ray-like structure, where each ray corresponds to a simple uniform linear array (sULA) with deliberately designed orientation and all its antenna elements are directly connected. By further designing a ray selection network (RSN), appropriate sULAs are selected to connect to the RF chains for further baseband processing. RAA has three appealing advantages: (i) dramatically reduced hardware cost since no phase shifters are needed; (ii) enhanced beamforming gain as antenna elements with higher directivity can be used; (iii) uniform angular resolution across all signal directions. Such benefits make RAA especially appealing for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), particularly for low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm ISAC, where high-mobility aerial targets may easily move away from the boresight of conventional antenna arrays, causing severe communication and sensing performance degradation. Therefore, this paper studies RAA-based ISAC for low-altitude UAV swarm systems. First, we establish an input-output mathematical model for RAA-based UAV ISAC and rigorously show that RAA achieves uniform angular resolution for all directions. Besides, we design the RAA orientation and RSN. Furthermore, RAA-based ISAC with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) for UAV swarm is studied, and efficient algorithm is proposed for sensing target parameter estimation. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the significant performance improvement by RAA system over the conventional antenna arrays, in terms of sensing angular resolution and communication spectral efficiency, highlighting the great potential of the novel RAA system to meet the growing demands of low-altitude UAV ISAC.